If you use Robin Williams name in your marketing today...

If you ever use a celebrity's death as part of a blog post topic and try to tie it back to your topic, there is a special place in internet hell for you. If you take a picture of his/her work, stamp your logo on it, and then say "Share if you will miss him", there is a special place in internet hell for you. I've seen both. I see both every time. Please sit on your fingers if you are thinking about doing it.

Subject: How to handle social media during a national tragedy - Robin Williams

Good morning team,

The recent announcement of Robin Williams’ passing has unsurprisingly created an uproar on social media today. I wanted to take this opportunity to remind the team how [Company name removed] handles tragic news like this on our own social media pages. If you take nothing else away from this memo, please remember this:

We should never use the misfortunes of others to gain likes, follows, reblogs or otherwise any type of attention to ourselves. While this may seem like an easy enough directive, it is easy to post something that is taken out of context and cause a huge public relations issue. The safest way to approach tragedies in the news is to simply keep them off our newsfeeds entirely.

A list of Do’s and Don’t for Today’s news on Robin Williams:

DO: post a maximum of one article from a reputable, non-biased, non-polarizing news source then move on. Note posting nothing at all is your safest bet. Here is an article from the LA Times that you can post if you choose to do so.

DON’T: post anything related to Robin Williams that is not tied to an article or otherwise informative in nature.

That's a great internal communication. Kudos to you for sending it out. From my agency's perspective, we usually counsel clients to remain quiet when it comes to tragedies (natural disaster, death, etc.). The only exception is if there is a direct link between the brand and the incident.

I completely disagree with this. How is this any different than showing a picture of your product side-by-side with an image of Robin Williams with text like, "If you're sad Mork is dead, buy our product!"

Who are you talking to? His ghost? It's just an "accepted" way of pandering where the hoped-for takeaway is that everyone will think you are a warmhearted, caring, empathetic person worthy of - I don't know - our admiration, respect - or perhaps business? May as well just be honest and say, I'm using this opportunity of a famous person's death to draw attention to ME! Hollywood, especially, loves dead celebrities. The number of ads in "The Trades" probably quadrupled with everyone falling all over themselves to run a full page to say goodbye to Williams, as if he can read it?

Is there a big, Germanic word for the act of doubling down on the internet when you've made a huge ass out of yourself? Because that is far and away one of my favorite things. Not just the guy saying something fucked up, but then going back and standing by what he said.

I can understand a company's social media addressing the death, and expressing their condolences. However, I do agree with the "share if you like!" thing being absolutely out of line. However, if it aligns with how your company presents itself, I think its completely appropriate to say something in respect for the man.

Yeah. I manage social media for a new/used media store (movies, video games, and whatnot). I'm sure that we broke the news to some people when we shared the story on our social channels. It seemed in line with the rest of the stuff we post.

What seemed grumpy about it? I said that I disagree, stated my reasons why in a matter of fact manner, then said I agree that simply saying that someone saying like/share this is just shitty marketing in general.

I wasn't grumpy, I just didn't agree with OP. I think it's actually kind of absurd that this post has so many upvotes because it's absurd to say you're going to hell for using robin williams' death as a blog topic. If your brand is not posting about current trending events then you are falling behind. If I'm not doing everything to help the brand that's paying my salary then I am selling myself short. I guess I'll go to hell, but if that's what you're worried about, you're in the wrong industry.

I was going to flood my pinterest with his pictures and shows and other goodies so others can remember him but part of me, just didn't feel right about it. I mean it would be hard to compile all the information and it will be depressing as well.

I thought about it, not to personally do it, but I figured there were many people licking their lips about the opportunity to get some impressions. This goes for not only Robin, but many sad events out there. I agree, it just ain't right.

Or find any picture of him, or a character he played, to throw it on reddit as quickly as possible knowing you'll get a flood of karma... there's a special place in internet hell for you, too. Seriously, it seemed like minutes after it was announced, people were already uploading their images.

I'm interested your business/line of work and thoughts about organizations that worked with him? My business is theatre. Robin worked at places I have worked (not with me much before) and some people there knew him personally. Most posts I have seen are about the loss felt by those who knew him and support for family and mental health. This seams appropriate to me.

While I agree as the old adage goes, "there is no such thing as bad press." Some companies or individuals may attempt to do this to bring attention to themselves, their companies, or their products. The bigger splash they make on the news outlets the better, it means free advertising for them.

Sadly the majority of us tend to forget or not care about incidents like the gaff made by the GOP politician but for him he is getting his name and face out there to a voting public that may forget why they remember his name in a month, but recognize it come election day and vote for him because of such name recognition. Thus how things like this can actually help an individual, company, or product.

It is one thing to express condolences. It is another thing to take advantage of it. If a brand just shared a canned image of a person I think that'd be OK. But once you stamp your logo on it, you are saying "I am going to take advantage of this event to promote my brand". Writing a blog post "The Things I Will Miss About PersonName" might be one thing. But a leadership blogger creating a post titled "The 12 things That Robin Williams Taught Me About Leadership" today would be unacceptable in my book.

The second doesn't seem horrible to me. What you've learned from the person who passed is a pretty natural topic and likely to come up even if you're not making money off posting it. It also seems likely that Robin Williams could be related to leadership as he was in the public eye.

It only bugs me when it's clearly exploitative and just being used to increase reach/engagement or if it's a real stretch.

In the world of internet traffic arbitrage that we live in people, people click on headlines with trending topics. Marketers know this. So there is a subset of marketers from hell who specifically look for trending topics and specifically write blog headlines around them. The trending topic has little to do with the main topic, but they trying to get some traffic because of the trending topic. Example: This morning I saw a UK (where Robin doesn't live) radio station (which Robin is not part of and has probably never been to) take an image of him, stamp their radio station logo on it, and put it on their fan page with the caption "Like/Share if you miss him" or something along those lines. That is clearly playing into peoples emotions and has zero to do with normal station operations. Those are the ones I am referring to.

It all depends on the blog's subject matter. If I run content for a soap/hygiene company, I should not even think about posting about RW. But if I'm a doctor's office, it's ok to post and include some Patch Adams references, etc.

If you only post about things that specifically relate to your brand then you are not doing social marketing right and I highly recommend you read the book "Jab Jab Jab Right Hook" by Gary Vaynerchuk.

You need to interact with your followers about what THEY care about to be more human as a brand. You don't have to call for likes or shares, but it's perfectly fine to post about it on social media or write a blog post about it. If you don't agree then that's fine, but any major social marketing agency is going to beat you out in brand engagement.

But if the consumer can't relate your site/brand to the person who has passed then it is not helpful to anyone and hinders your reach and makes you look like youre trying to ride the funeral train to more pageviews

That's not true though. You want to be constantly interacting with your consumers. You want them to see you as just a person they are friends with, or follow, etc. Those are Jabs. You do this to establish a connection with fans. It's not to get new followers, though it could. It's to make your content more native. Brands do this on twitter non-stop.

Then, because your brand seems more native to the platform by following current trends and the consumer looks at you like a friend they interact with, at another time, you can include a call for action. That's the right hook.

It's a very insightful book an has helped me remarkably working in social on the agency side. Seriously, I recommend it.

I get where you're coming from with that strategy but as a user I don't want Bounty paper towels talking to me about a celebrity death. Or Jimmy Dean sausages talking about the Oscars. To me as a user it screams that the brand is trying too hard to be relevant when really I just want to hear about new products or events or get discounts for following them

Yes but if you went on twitter and saw 8000000000000 people tweeting about the oscars and then you see one tweet saying "make sure to buy sausages", that would stand out in a negative way. It's an advertisement on a site that's revolves around picking people's minds on trending topics. If you saw Jimmy Dean tweet "Great that _____ won ____." you wouldn't give it a second thought because everyone else said the exact same thing at the same time.

Only posting ads for products or promotions that a brand is selling is off-putting and likely to get you un-followed on un-friended. Also, this will lead to you posts showing up less on the people that still follow you because you won't be getting likes so the quality is less. Even if you pay to promote your ad, that gets multiplied by a quality score to see how much you show up, similar to SEM.

No if I see a Jimmy Dean tweet like "Great that _____ won ____." I'm gonna think WTF is going on, why do I follow this garbage? Why does a sausage and breakfast company have any relevance in my feed to this movie awards show.

Ok, but seriously look up some literature on this stuff if you're interest. I work for a pretty famous agency in social and search and pretty much all of our best practices advise against what you are suggesting, especially for something like twitter.